Is Your Inbox Insured? Deliverability is The Ultimate Insurance Policy with Matt McFee, CEO of Inbox Monster

"If you're not treating deliverability as revenue insurance, you're already losing money." — Matt

This Hot Seat episode puts Matt McFee, an email veteran and founder of Inbox Monster, under the microscope. Jacqueline digs into how he went from Wall Street and Yahoo to co-founding BriteVerify, acquired by Validity, and why he thinks most brands are still wildly underestimating deliverability. He unpacks why inbox placement is really a revenue insurance program, not just a technical hygiene task, and why the real customer "moment of value" usually happens months after the contract is signed.

Brought to you by Hightouch - the leading composable CDP and decisioning platform trusted by brands like Domino's, Chime, and Aritzia. 90% of customers have a real use case live within their first week, delivering world-class personalization at scale. Learn more at www.hightouch.com/msom.

Timestamps

01:03 – What would make Martech better?

05:22 – What 25 years in email have taught him about the inbox

07:32 – Lightbulb moment that led to found BriteVerify and Inbox Monster

11:58 – AI previews, creative rendering, and why annotations actually matter

15:48 – What marketers should be paying more attention to in deliverability

19:55 – Quantifying deliverability as a revenue insurance program for stakeholders

25:02 – Opinions on industry innovation and consolidation

28:23 – What vendors can do to better help marketers

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Creators and Guests

Host

Jacqueline Freedman

What is Making Sense of Martech?

Unfiltered takes on the biggest shifts in marketing technology. We spotlight what matters, who's leading (or lagging), and what's next. In Martech, clarity is power — and we're here to deliver it.

00;00;06;10 - 00;00;29;15
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Making Sense of MarTech podcast, where we interview leaders and put them in the hotseat. I'm Jacqueline Friedman, founder of monarch and global head of advisory for the MarTech weekly. Let's dive in and meet Matt McPhee. A little bit about him first. So Matt is a long time email leader and the force behind Inbox Monster, where he helps marketers stay ahead of deliverability issues with smart, real time monitoring tools.

00;00;29;18 - 00;00;48;21
Speaker 1
Before that, he co-founded Bright Verify, the platform that made email verification easy. Asked in a central, eventually leading to its acquisition by validity, which we'll get back to you later. With a background in sales, product development and scaling tech. He's built a career out of solving tough problems for marketers. And so to get us started. Welcome to the hotseat, Matt.

00;00;48;23 - 00;00;49;26
Speaker 1
We're so excited you're here.

00;00;49;28 - 00;00;52;24
Speaker 2
Great to be here, Jacqueline. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you.

00;00;52;25 - 00;01;03;28
Speaker 1
So good to see you too. So to start us off, we're going to begin with a few quick questions to warm things up, just like any good IP warmup. So complete the sentence. MarTech would be so much better if.

00;01;03;29 - 00;01;15;00
Speaker 2
Boy, this is less about the technology side and more about just the operations side. I think martech would be so much better if companies would spend more time on customer discovery in less time over selling their products.

00;01;15;03 - 00;01;26;00
Speaker 1
Hard agree. If only everyone actually listed their potential customers, right? All right. What's one marketing buzzword you would love to ban forever?

00;01;26;05 - 00;01;28;07
Speaker 2
Right now it would be AI powered.

00;01;28;10 - 00;01;32;28
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. I feel like every conversation. It's it's too much. It's too much.

00;01;32;28 - 00;01;36;06
Speaker 2
15 years ago was big data. Today it's AI powered.

00;01;36;09 - 00;01;42;01
Speaker 1
You are correct. And I would say even before in between that there was personalization too. And it's just keeps going with you.

00;01;42;01 - 00;01;42;29
Speaker 2
Right.

00;01;43;02 - 00;01;46;12
Speaker 1
All right. So what's one more tech kill you willing to die on.

00;01;46;19 - 00;01;49;29
Speaker 2
Let's say customer success is the most important KPI.

00;01;50;04 - 00;02;00;21
Speaker 1
Understood I agree. And also true CSat score is not paid for one. Yes. All right. And last but not least, what are you most curious about right now.

00;02;00;24 - 00;02;24;20
Speaker 2
Right now. So from my seat, I'm spending a lot of time trying to understand the governance, compliance and privacy implications around AI. I know AI powered is one of the catch phrases AI, buzzwords I would love to see eliminated. But the tools themselves, whether they be machine learning or artificial intelligence enabled tools, can really deliver some exciting things for our respective worlds.

00;02;24;26 - 00;02;49;10
Speaker 2
So I'm spending a lot of my time just trying to understand the data and privacy and security implications of the models that we're looking at. Hopefully, our current information security program is going to be very consistent and remains consistent throughout the kind of implementation of some of these agents and models that power them. And therefore, we kind of don't have to really move the needle very much with respect to the information security side.

00;02;49;14 - 00;03;10;09
Speaker 2
A lot of enterprises are resistant right now to these tools, and I think that's because there's so many unknowns and things are changing so quickly. So that's what I'm really spending a lot of time on right now, is just understanding how and whether things will change as we evolve our tooling to include more of these intelligence based or machine learning based solutions.

00;03;10;11 - 00;03;30;06
Speaker 1
That's a great thing to be curious about. I'm curious about it, too, because one privacy regulations in particular take a long time, and we haven't even started with AI. We haven't. So there's a lot to come and hopefully some good protections and guardrails for a lot of particular things. Otherwise, we're going to live in a Terminator world and I'm not ready for it.

00;03;30;08 - 00;03;34;10
Speaker 2
Or a world where adoption, it just remains low because no one's comfortable moving forward.

00;03;34;13 - 00;03;47;19
Speaker 1
That's true, that's true. That's also a huge downside, especially on such an impactful opportunity in the marketplace and in the world. All right. Let's dive in. Let's get a little personal. What's been the biggest influence on you, your career? You name it.

00;03;47;21 - 00;04;07;26
Speaker 2
Early in my time in email before we even started building. Right. Verify. There was a, an industry mentor of mine. His name was Bill nasi. He was the CEO of Silver Pop, which was an ISP that was sold to IBM. I forgot the date, but, anyone who's been in the in the industry as long as I have will will remember the name Silver Power.

00;04;07;29 - 00;04;38;26
Speaker 2
Bill was just great with his time. He was a mentor of mine and he was a technologist. He was an early internet entrepreneur and ran Excel, which was kind of an early internet business, global kind of business. But he was just really well experienced, great human being, really enjoyed spending time with him. And he was willing to take a call, make an introduction and help me in any way that really, I asked, connect me with partners, connect me with folks within Silver Pop, connect me with customers.

00;04;38;26 - 00;04;55;17
Speaker 2
If he felt our offering was was relevant to the customer's needs. So just, you know, one of those human beings that you kind of meet early in your career where you really start to kind of emulate your behaviors and think through how you want to take what you've learned from that person and then put it into practice later in life.

00;04;55;17 - 00;05;00;03
Speaker 2
And so I've tried to do that the most about the best of my ability. Yeah, but Bill was a big influence early on.

00;05;00;05 - 00;05;22;03
Speaker 1
That's amazing. And such an incredible mentor, particularly in in the niche that is email. That's wonderful. And kind of speaking on that, you've been in the space for at least 25 years, starting with Yahoo one. I want to definitely hear that story and how you first found your way there, but I would also love to hear what you think of email.

00;05;22;03 - 00;05;27;14
Speaker 1
After all of these years. I've heard it's going to die. It's dead. It's no longer. Just love your perspective, but all the above.

00;05;27;14 - 00;05;46;25
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for asking. Yes. So I joined the internet officially in March of 2000. When I left business school, I went to work for a Wall Street bank and didn't love it as much as I thought I would. Coming out at a friend of mine that worked at the bank as well left for actually a company called 24 over seven Real Media, which was one of the first internet media companies.

00;05;46;25 - 00;06;05;03
Speaker 2
It was 24 over seven and double click that really competed for media publisher rights and email and email was a growing business at 24 seven. And so my my friend from the bank went over there and they were a fast growing company. They were investing a lot in the growth of their email business, and there was a role for me if I wanted it.

00;06;05;05 - 00;06;23;11
Speaker 2
It seemed really, really cool. You know, thinking back to some of the things that mattered at the time, I this is hard to imagine sitting in our respective seats today, but back then when you worked for the banks, you dressed up every single day suits, ties and the internet was bringing a whole new kind of definition to, to business dress.

00;06;23;11 - 00;06;37;22
Speaker 2
It was completely relaxed and casual, as was the culture. And so it just seemed really interesting. And so I'd like to say that I had great intention when I joined the email space and felt like it was going to be a career, but for me, it was more like it just looked like a really cool opportunity to pursue at the time.

00;06;37;27 - 00;06;42;00
Speaker 1
I love that and how did Yahoo! How did you stumble upon Yahoo at the time too?

00;06;42;00 - 00;07;04;07
Speaker 2
Yeah, so I was actually it was a it was an opportunity that came about because I was making a personal change in life. My wife and I were up in New York when I was working for 24 over seven Real Media, and we were making a move just relocating down to Charlotte, North Carolina, and the opportunity kind of came through a conversation with my old boss at 24 over seven, who had then taken a role at Yahoo, was building an email team over there.

00;07;04;07 - 00;07;18;11
Speaker 2
And so that conversation started right around the time my wife and I made the decision to relocate. And that conversation led to building a business model around it and him getting it funded internally, and then me joining a part of his team as the email team over at Yahoo!

00;07;18;17 - 00;07;32;27
Speaker 1
Amazing. And so clearly email is something you're passionate about. What was the light bulb moment from Yahoo or in between that led you to build out right verify and then ultimately inbox monster.

00;07;32;29 - 00;07;57;29
Speaker 2
Yeah. Great question. So when we started so my partners at pride verify we actually had a lead generation agency back in 2006. And it was a services based industry. So it was, you know, a lot of media budget being allocated to our publisher partners and building data sets for our customers. The financial crisis started to hit. It became very, very apparent that there was going to be a lot of volatility around media spending.

00;07;57;29 - 00;08;28;11
Speaker 2
So we decided to pivot at that moment and build product move from a services business to a product business. And the light bulb moment for us was when we we got to the point where we built the what we ultimately would become, right. Verify on top of AWS cloud infrastructure. Cloud services were relatively new at the time, but we were able to leverage those and had some very curious engineers that wanted to try these new tools, and they allowed us to scale and get to market with the product much more quickly and cost effectively than we would have been able to just a few years earlier.

00;08;28;13 - 00;08;50;22
Speaker 2
So I think the light bulb moment, after spending about a year building out the platform, was when we won our first material deal and the reason was the Bright verify platform performed faster and was more accurate than the alternatives that existed at the time. And so that was when we realized, hey, we really might have something here. And that was when we just kind of pivoted and went full in on the bright verify business.

00;08;50;22 - 00;08;51;28
Speaker 1
Amazing. Yeah.

00;08;52;00 - 00;09;27;26
Speaker 2
And then in monster, there wasn't necessarily a light bulb moment, as you mentioned during the introduction with the exit of bright Verify. There was just some time there kind of watching the market and figuring out what might be next. And in 2020, when the current founding team at in-box monster saw the consolidation taking place in the deliverability services world, we just felt like there was going to be an opportunity to deliver an innovative, cost effective, customer forward platform, and that we released our platform in June of 2021 and thankfully, knock on what our thesis has been right so far.

00;09;27;26 - 00;09;36;16
Speaker 2
So it wasn't necessarily a moment, but it was certainly because of, you know, some things we were seeing in market that we felt like there was a really good opportunity to build something special.

00;09;36;19 - 00;09;56;15
Speaker 1
Oh for sure. There definitely was a huge gap at that time. And I mean, I think you guys are starting to fill it and there's still a gap and there's still so much opportunity left as a result to still continue forward with. And so now I want to get a little bit nerdier. We've kind of learned a bit about you and your background and where you're at.

00;09;56;15 - 00;10;05;13
Speaker 1
I'd love to hear what the current tech stack is at Inbox Monster, as well as your favorite and maybe least favorite tool or what the biggest opportunity is.

00;10;05;16 - 00;10;28;06
Speaker 2
Yeah, I'll keep the least favorite ones out. Because I don't know them enough to have a least favorite. But so we use a combination of tools for kind of customer communications. We don't do a ton of outbound marketing, but we have our kind of automated lifecycle onboarding journeys, set up an active campaign. We use intercom for customer communications and, Salesforce.

00;10;28;06 - 00;10;50;28
Speaker 2
As you could imagine, a company like Salesforce for CRM unbound to host our landing pages and our signup forms. And so one of the tool that we will actually that has the greatest upside for us is the active campaign tool, because we're leveraging active Campaign and just starting to build out these kind of triggered lifecycle journeys around customers that are getting onboarded within the platform.

00;10;50;28 - 00;11;09;00
Speaker 2
And I think there's just so much upside that we'll be able to generate through more and more use of these journeys beyond just onboarding into kind of the true life cycle nature of our customer. And so we haven't even scratched the surface on that yet. But I'm really excited to, to kind of lean a little bit more into that tool.

00;11;09;00 - 00;11;22;12
Speaker 2
And then we've got a bunch of smaller tools that kind of manage or deliver value for different silos within the organization, whether it be our sales team or our marketing team or our tech team. But those are some of the big ones. When you kind of think about the traditional martech definition.

00;11;22;12 - 00;11;38;20
Speaker 1
Yeah, for sure. That's exciting to hear. And also just means there's so much opportunity on that lifecycle component. And I imagine your team is very consent forward and content based with the way you go about marketing, which is the only real way. That's my personal opinion.

00;11;38;22 - 00;11;39;22
Speaker 2
Absolutely agree.

00;11;39;29 - 00;11;45;14
Speaker 1
It seems to be a hot take according to LinkedIn. But it's it's what I believe in. But we're in agreement.

00;11;45;15 - 00;11;46;05
Speaker 2
Yes.

00;11;46;07 - 00;11;58;17
Speaker 1
So in terms of all of the different capabilities, features and functionality Inbox Monster brings to the table what is the singular feature? Maybe it's a larger project overall that you're most proud of rolling out?

00;11;58;17 - 00;12;23;29
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's great question. The you know, I think some of the things that we're most proud of or personally most proud of are the tools that we deliver that add immediate value to our customers lives. Right? There's just that there are many kind of tactical things that we build into the platform based on requests from customers that give them an additional insight, an additional function that they can execute on to be a little bit more efficient at their job.

00;12;24;04 - 00;12;58;09
Speaker 2
One of the things that comes to mind right now comes out of our creative rendering platform, which are previews designed to capture the AI preview or annotations from Gmail, or the results of the schema set up with Yahoo, so our customers can understand in real time before they ever move to production approval for their content, exactly how those three views are going to capture and present those kind of those short kind of, you know, synopses of, of the email content itself, each of those mail systems and with with Apple, it's, you know, the email app on the phones.

00;12;58;16 - 00;13;19;01
Speaker 2
They deliver in a different way. Right? So there's there are ways to properly design content and the structure of your content to make sure Gmail and Yahoo present that the elements you care most about Apple makes it much more difficult. Right? So the ability to to to display what those views are going to look like to a consumer once they receive your emails with these AI preview tools.

00;13;19;04 - 00;13;52;18
Speaker 2
That's one thing that I'm really, really proud about. Mostly because it was complicated to accomplish. So from an engineering perspective, it was a great achievement. But customers are demanding it. They need to see exactly how a great majority of their viewers are going to see their content. And then additional questions come in like attribution if if the previews pulling in a discount code or, something to that effect where a user can just go right to the site and enter the discount code, you kind of lose attribution from the email, which was originally maybe a click that got the consumer to the landing page where the the code could be used.

00;13;52;21 - 00;14;05;11
Speaker 2
So there's still a lot unknown in there, but that's just a part of the, you know, you ask about the things that I'm proud of. That's one of a more recent, mostly because everybody is trying to create that transparency in their programing. Now they can, which is great.

00;14;05;16 - 00;14;30;03
Speaker 1
That's amazing. Attribution in of itself is its own beast of a topic. So that's amazing in terms of what you guys are bringing to the forefront, and also even just acknowledging and recognizing and touting that you're listening to what your customers are demanding. I think there's so many companies out there that it kind of goes into a voice, and you give the feedback, you submit the survey, nothing ever really happens.

00;14;30;06 - 00;14;41;12
Speaker 1
And that's not true everywhere, of course, but I'm grateful that that's an accomplishment, an achievement you're proud of in particular, too. It also shows a true character of kind of what culture you're bringing to the table and.

00;14;41;12 - 00;14;41;27
Speaker 2
Things like.

00;14;41;27 - 00;14;42;02
Speaker 1
That.

00;14;42;02 - 00;14;43;04
Speaker 2
Sir, I appreciate that.

00;14;43;05 - 00;15;04;08
Speaker 1
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00;15;04;08 - 00;15;22;20
Speaker 1
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00;15;22;22 - 00;15;47;04
Speaker 1
And now back to the hotseat. So kind of shifting gears slightly in terms of product specifically, but more about what Inbox Monster is bringing to the table, but also just deliverability in general. What is something the people and marketing teams, engineering teams and teams, you name it, should be paying more attention to because it's not just what my emails arrive into the inbox, there's so much more that goes into deliverability.

00;15;47;04 - 00;15;48;13
Speaker 1
So I'm curious what your thoughts are.

00;15;48;16 - 00;16;17;29
Speaker 2
Yeah, there's so much change that's taking place at the mail system level over time. You've seen a slow consolidation of mail systems. I think the most recent one that's of note was Cox rolling up their mail services to the Yahoo platform. But there have been many that have preceded that in the preceding years. There's also I mean, Google's when you look internationally, Google is taking so much market share with Gmail that you'll see some of the small regional players in other countries just shutting down or rolling up to consolidate to remain competitive.

00;16;17;29 - 00;16;47;15
Speaker 2
So I think in a longer term we'll probably see a little that we'll probably see that continue on. But that change doesn't take place as as quickly as some of the other changes that we've seen at the mail system level. So last year, with the announcement of tighter controls from Gmail and Yahoo, around complaint rates and dMarc records and unsubscribe and then outlook coming out with their confirmation for bulk senders that went into effect recently around kind of what's going to happen if you're not, you know, aligned for alignment on your, your records.

00;16;47;15 - 00;17;04;09
Speaker 2
And so there's I think those changes, while they were messaged far in advance, we saw a lot of last minute panic from customers who hadn't quite brought their programs up to where they needed to be when the, you know, kind of February of 2024 hit and then monitoring was going to start to, to kind of kick in.

00;17;04;09 - 00;17;24;11
Speaker 2
But thankfully they had a grace period there because I don't think really the controls really went into effect in a noticeable basis until later in the mid-year. So I think we'll probably continue to see those sorts of things where the big mail systems are tightening down the controls to ensure that their consumers are only receiving emails they care to see, and that it's really easy to say, I don't want to see this anymore.

00;17;24;11 - 00;17;49;25
Speaker 2
And then it's likely even going to be easier if a consumer just wants to complain about an email, which makes that complaint rate management so, so important. I think we'll just continue to see innovation too. Like I mentioned the AI previews earlier, I suspect we will see continued evolution, on a faster pace with, with innovation and new tools kind of brought into to create a better experience for email subscribers, because ultimately it's going to be a race riot.

00;17;49;25 - 00;18;10;27
Speaker 2
Gmail owns it right now, but Yahoo's doing a great job with rolling out some new tools, and I would suspect they're all going to continue to compete to make sure the inbox remains a place that's preserved for messaging that people want to read. So I think those are going to be some really, really important things. The experts in this space, some of which work for Inbox Monster, some of which work for ISPs and other competitors.

00;18;10;29 - 00;18;34;19
Speaker 2
They know all the knowledge, they understand the strategy. So my guidance would be just pay attention to the experts, you know, listen to their guidance around best practices, around kind of how to close the gap between your current practices and moving the best practices. It's not always, always an easy business decision. Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances in an org where a manager says no to moving to better practices.

00;18;34;21 - 00;18;42;04
Speaker 2
But, ultimately, I think the experts are going to be the ones to continue to guide organizations. So listen to the experts.

00;18;42;06 - 00;19;07;29
Speaker 1
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. I, for one, am very excited about the latest Microsoft update and just all of the different providers finally kind of paying attention and listening. And, as much as there's change changing for example, Apple Mail's approach to presenting your inbox an Gmail did that over ten years ago. It's it's all evolving for customer first and privacy first, which is what we as consumers deserve.

00;19;08;01 - 00;19;20;22
Speaker 1
And so I definitely understand the hesitation from some folks and maybe the last minute panic, but ultimately it's kind of a step in the right direction to hopefully make email more meaningful as well as every other aspect of marketing too.

00;19;20;29 - 00;19;21;12
Speaker 2
Hey man.

00;19;21;17 - 00;19;52;16
Speaker 1
One day we'll hopefully have the most meaningful marketing experiences in the world. All right, we've got a question from someone in the field you were mentioning. There's some deliverability experts. And I tapped Alison Goody. A deliverability advocacy specialist at Cinch Milk and previously at braze for about six years. So she knows her stuff and at scale. And her question is, what are the most effective ways you found to quantify the value of deliverability for stakeholders, and how can we actually futureproof our industry?

00;19;52;18 - 00;19;55;12
Speaker 1
I know I've dealt with this question bunch. I'd love to hear your perspective.

00;19;55;15 - 00;20;21;29
Speaker 2
Yeah. Great question Alison, and congratulations on the recent move. So when we have this conversation with prospects, we ideally like the business stakeholder involved in the conversation, and this is going to be the person who is responsible for revenues through the email stream. And likely one of the many things that person is responsible for. It's not very often that a sender will share their revenue metrics or their revenue per subscriber metrics with us.

00;20;22;01 - 00;20;47;02
Speaker 2
And so what we do is we'll create a little bit of a calculator, experience, right, where we can help measure one of two things. Either the cost of not being in the inbox, which in a lot of instances, we'll speak with companies that know they have existing issues and they know they have existing issues because they're moving from one platform to inbox monster, or they don't have a platform working on their behalf, but they've seen a reduction in performance in revenues over time.

00;20;47;02 - 00;21;09;27
Speaker 2
So they need to get some visibility that they don't have at the moment. And so we'll help them understand the cost of not being in the inbox, because there's already that existing delta. And once a customer solves that challenge and has brought deliverability and inbox place them up to kind of maximum rate for their business, then the conversation is less about evaluating the cost, not being in the inbox and evaluating the value of staying there.

00;21;09;27 - 00;21;32;08
Speaker 2
And so they're kind of two sides of the same coin when you really think about how the math works. But at the end of the day, you have a high 90%, 9,598% inbox placement rate for large organization. Those organizations still invest in deliverability monitoring because they become insurance programs around any sort of leading indicators that would ultimately have a long term effect on revenues.

00;21;32;11 - 00;21;55;29
Speaker 2
And so the ability in real time to be alerted if there's a trend that has reversed, that could have some short term or medium term effect on email revenues. Those are the types of things that these systems are great at identifying and alerting on. And so the value of staying in the inbox is the conversation we have with, with senders who already are hitting very, very high inbox rates and tax revenues.

00;21;56;01 - 00;22;16;11
Speaker 2
But they know that it's a small investment to maintain that piece. Right. Insurance and reduce the risk that any changes are going to have a bad effect. And so that's kind of how we calculate that out bullet proofing or future proofing the industry. Again I think there's so many changes that are yet to to be experienced at the mail system level.

00;22;16;14 - 00;22;37;08
Speaker 2
And having systems like ours and teams like ours that are just responsible for understanding where this industry is going, communicating with the mail systems and the mailbox providers themselves. Attending industry shows, having a forward view on how our whole industry is moving, and then building tools to support that and insights. And a great example is the evolution of tabs, right?

00;22;37;08 - 00;23;00;10
Speaker 2
Tabs with Gmail and Outlook have been around for quite a while. Everyone has become accustomed to those. But now with iCloud and Yahoo releasing their tabs, we have two new data points that are now available for marketers to, to understand and pay attention to. So I think as long as we can stay ahead of the curve and stay ahead of what's coming, to give marketers tools that just continue to monitor every data point that's available for them.

00;23;00;17 - 00;23;25;16
Speaker 2
I think we'll continue to do a good job now. Future proofing it. Hard to say. I mean, I've asked this question earlier than an email for a long, long time, 25 years now. In her, probably five times that email is going to die. But I've raised kids that didn't have email. All they had was social media, and now they communicate with their bosses and with some friends and with their school as an alum, an alumni of their, the college school that, they communicate over email.

00;23;25;16 - 00;23;39;20
Speaker 2
So I think it's a generational thing. People tend to pick it up a little bit, as they get through college and into their professional career. It's our job to to stay ahead of the game, to make sure that people sending to my daughters remain relevant and are able to remain in the inbox.

00;23;39;21 - 00;24;08;21
Speaker 1
That's a great way to to frame and phrase all of the above. I think there is both a huge opportunity, also not just for the email providers themselves in terms of ISPs, but also the actual source companies, as well as the deliverability services to provide that education. I think so few actually understand how deliverability it can impact the actual sending domain, and as a result, your revenue in that lack of business outcome and kind of connecting the dots is so important.

00;24;08;21 - 00;24;15;00
Speaker 1
So I'm glad there's companies like Inbox Monster as well as other folks really trying to advocate on that behalf because it's hard.

00;24;15;03 - 00;24;16;15
Speaker 2
It is. It is.

00;24;16;18 - 00;24;20;07
Speaker 1
The situation. Once you're in it, you never want to be in it again.

00;24;20;09 - 00;24;37;29
Speaker 2
We we speak at shows. We talk a lot about that example right there. It is the it's the 30 to 60 to 90 day dig out from whatever challenges you're facing versus the 2 or 3 days where you catch the trend and you solve for it. Well, because before it affects revenues and that that's the job, right? That's the job we all signed up for.

00;24;38;01 - 00;25;01;04
Speaker 1
Yep. For sure. And while we talk about maybe future proofing is not the easiest possible opportunity, I do see a lot of innovation, not just AI related, but there's been a lot of innovating and we'll just say rearranging of some of the same building blocks. I'd love to hear your opinions at the industry at large, because you've been through the rearranging before yourself.

00;25;01;04 - 00;25;02;08
Speaker 1
And so I'd love your perspective.

00;25;02;09 - 00;25;37;15
Speaker 2
Yep. It's, it's interesting. Right? This is probably the third go around in the industry that I operate in, where we've seen a roll up of organizations that created supply side opportunities for new organizations. And I think the the most obvious ones to me are the the original roll up of the exact targets of the world and the silver parts of the world apart of us and eloqua all those mail systems getting acquired up to large organizations that then created a lot of space for new organizations to roll up with a better offering built on top of an mBTA, with better reporting, better functionality.

00;25;37;23 - 00;26;01;29
Speaker 2
So I don't think all of martech necessarily is just kind of rebuild with the same blocks. I think there has been innovation that has taken place. I do think that the companies that have the best strategy and willingness to invest in that strategy around the intelligence that we're all that we all have a valid all have access to these days and really take a customer first approach on how using that intelligence can deliver better value for the customer.

00;26;02;02 - 00;26;17;04
Speaker 2
I think those are going to be the ones that really kind of stand out and deliver just some better tools for the market, right? But it's hard, but there's a lot of customers on platforms and I won't name names, but they're on platforms right now that they don't love. But getting off of the platform is hard.

00;26;17;06 - 00;26;22;21
Speaker 1
Why don't we name names, Well, and it's the hot seat after all.

00;26;22;23 - 00;26;44;04
Speaker 2
It's a very, very good point. But but, you know, it's there has to be evolution at the enterprise level in the same way, some of these kind of mid to the kind of lower to mid enterprise competitors are going to deliver this year. And I think about it again mostly through the lens of the, you know, service provider world, because that's where we interface most often.

00;26;44;04 - 00;27;06;11
Speaker 2
But I have to believe that's also consistent in other parts of the martech stack, helping procurement teams consolidate, delivering better value at a lower cost to the actual marketing teams or the CRM owners. These are just common themes that will always resonate and always make sense. I think with the some of the tools that we're all working through right now, I think that will we'll see innovation come more quickly.

00;27;06;13 - 00;27;19;27
Speaker 2
But I know, Jacqueline, you've been in the same room that I have recently and just kind of listened to the forward looking view around product evolution, and it's a beautiful view. The question is, can it be delivered? And that's going to be the key.

00;27;20;00 - 00;27;43;15
Speaker 1
Yeah. The big question is who is going to be agile and execute what they actually promise. And and it's a big question mark. I'm hopeful for a number of places and every company out there, but it's going to be truly those who listen to their customers and what they want. And I feel like that just keeps being a common theme, just customer for word customer first throughout.

00;27;43;15 - 00;28;06;05
Speaker 1
And so speaking of customers, what is something you foresee or would like to see for vendors? And it could be deliverability or just email in general in the martech space to better help marketers, both the technical and the non-technical. Because you speak to likely a life cycle or to gen marketer much differently than to add marketing operations or marketing systems.

00;28;06;05 - 00;28;23;08
Speaker 2
Architect, I'm going to step into a more general answer, so I hope you don't mind and certainly ask the question again. If I don't, deliver the type of answer you're looking for, we talked quite a bit about the customer's moment of value here at Inbox Monster and what we often see. And we we fell victim to it early.

00;28;23;08 - 00;28;50;19
Speaker 2
Early in our, our business as well as vendors tend to have a moment of value that's tied to the contract signature date. Right. So that is a moment of victory for the vendors. Whereas the customer's moment of value often doesn't come for a month or 2 or 3 after the contract is signed. So I would just love to see more vendors invest in getting the customer to the moment of value as much as they invest in getting the vendor to the moment of value right.

00;28;50;19 - 00;29;13;13
Speaker 2
We tend to over invest in the sales and marketing process, but when it comes to delivering on what the customer has acquired from us, a lot of vendors then Underwhelm and we flip that on on its head. We often say that, the worst process you're going to experience in Inbox Monster is the sales process, because everything from that point forward is outstanding.

00;29;13;15 - 00;29;24;16
Speaker 2
And so I think that that's something that I would I love to see an evolution towards an investment in getting the customer to their moment of value from all vendors, not just us. That I think leads to success across the board.

00;29;24;19 - 00;29;45;22
Speaker 1
I agree, I've noticed a small, but I think it's a growing shift towards outcome based both contracts but also approaches and as a result one your customers are going to be happier, your retention rates are going to be better. And also you don't have to acquire as aggressively and do non content based email where as a result.

00;29;45;24 - 00;29;47;12
Speaker 2
If the truth.

00;29;47;15 - 00;30;15;22
Speaker 1
It really is, it really is. You know that's super helpful to hear that perspective too, because I think a lot of times there's internal champions that are having to do those business outcomes on their own. And to your point, I think having sales be your partner and helping identify how you're going to measure that and really kind of set benchmarks so that everyone's expectations are understood both at the point of signing the contract, but also the next six months.

00;30;15;24 - 00;30;38;27
Speaker 1
And you've mentioned before just an email migration of itself. It can take anywhere from a month to three years, depending on the complexity. It's it's definitely deflating if you're in year two and we still haven't achieved any ROI or something along those lines. And so working together and making sure that outcome is identified and think is is very valid and should be, oh, every company is doing it.

00;30;38;27 - 00;31;00;25
Speaker 2
Absolutely. Our our head of CSS Brad over here has for the last few years really, driven home the value of those early discovery notes, the pre contract discovery notes, because that's when the customer is going to be most truthful about this is where we're having problems. Here's the solution we're looking for. We get in the procurement discussion and that sort of thing.

00;31;00;25 - 00;31;28;11
Speaker 2
We don't really get great discovery questions about what matters to the customer. But those notes are so important to properly transitioning a customer who's like, yep, let's go. Contract is signed to the Success team, and the success team isn't as informed about what matters most to the customer as the salesperson was. There's a loss of value immediately. And, I'm sure Brad would be laughing when he hears this because I've typically been not very good to discovery notes, so I'll throw that in.

00;31;28;13 - 00;31;48;25
Speaker 1
You know what that is? Well, this is a martech podcast. I, I see sales and marketing really just the yin and the yang. And to that point, if your salesperson does the full discovery, that means everything else you do will be more informed about a segment better all of the above. And that's not just from a customer success or experience standpoint.

00;31;48;25 - 00;31;57;00
Speaker 1
It is truly the entire lifecycle, whatever your customer is. So I guess I'm going to agree with Brad. Work on your discovery.

00;31;57;03 - 00;31;59;19
Speaker 2
Is all about the discovery.

00;31;59;22 - 00;32;12;11
Speaker 1
It's an important dance to do in the beginning and honestly throughout the whole process. Well, I just want to say thank you so much, Matt. We got one more question for you. Who is someone we should have on the podcast?

00;32;12;18 - 00;32;34;13
Speaker 2
If you haven't spoken to Jeremy yet, reach out to Jeremy Seltzer. He's the CRO, a movable link. He posts a lot in LinkedIn just about the martech world in general. He's got a really interesting view, speaks to the CMO level quite a bit at the fortune 500 level. And so I think he's got a great perspective, not only the current state of the martech stack, but also probably a good future view on where things are headed.

00;32;34;18 - 00;32;36;09
Speaker 2
So he's someone I suggest should reach out to.

00;32;36;16 - 00;32;51;01
Speaker 1
Okay, I will ask you for that introduction. Happy because love move plank and all the work they've been doing for years and years. So looking forward to that as well. Thank you again Matt. Where can folks find you or learn about Inbox Monster?

00;32;51;02 - 00;33;01;21
Speaker 2
Yeah. So inbox Monster.com. Naturally, I'm on LinkedIn and that's where I spend all my social media time. So, LinkedIn will be the one spot and certainly inbox Monster.com. Perfect.

00;33;01;23 - 00;33;05;04
Speaker 1
Thank you so much, Matt. It's good to see you. I'll see you soon. Actually.

00;33;05;04 - 00;33;07;28
Speaker 2
I thank you so much for our thanks.

00;33;07;28 - 00;33;08;13
Speaker 1
I hope I.